Budowsky: The Trump Republican tax scandal

Democrats can regain control of Congress in the 2018 midterm elections and achieve a political realignment in the 2020 presidential campaign by running against the scandal of Trump Republican tax cuts and Trump Republican budget deficits, which presage more Trump Republican attacks against Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and ObamaCare.

It is argued in some political circles that Democrats should stop focusing on the widespread disapproval of President Trump and focus, instead, on policy issues that create a “Democratic message.” The fact is that on the matters that move the hearts and minds of voters in elections, the man,President Trump, and the party, Republicans, are indistinguishable and marching in lockstep to reshape the nation to a new Gilded Age that most Americans vehemently reject.

{mosads}Democrats should declare themselves — from the most urban America to the most rural America, from Main Street to the farms and the factories — as the party that fights for the many against the party that fights for the few.

Democrats should run aggressively against the Trump Republican tax scandal in which Republicans wrote a secret tax bill behind closed doors, under the influence of special-interest lobbyists, that created the most lavish benefits for the most wealthy Americans in the history of tax bills and the most massive budget deficits in the history of economic policy — which will plague the nation for generations unless reversed by Democratic victories in 2018 and 2020.

An important story on CNBC this week discussed a new NBC/Wall Street Journal survey that found, as other polls have found, that the tax bill forced through by Trump Republicans through abusive procedures, which was never broadly popular, continues to sag even more in public esteem. In this poll only 27 percent of Americans said they consider the tax-cut bill a good idea, while 53 percent of Americans said they expect the tax bill to have a negative impact because of the huge deficits it creates and the disproportionate benefits it lavishes on the wealthiest Americans and corporations.

Voters are only beginning to understand the full magnitude of unprecedented and grotesque deficits the Trump Republican tax scandal created.  According to a recent report by the Congressional Budget Office, the tax bill will lower revenue by $1.3 trillion from 2018 to 2028, and, adding the costs of paying interest on this new government debt created by the Trump Republican tax scandal, the deficit will ultimately rise by a staggering $1.9 trillion.

Democrats should argue that it is a Trump Republican scandal that the tax bill was written in secret and that special-interest lobbyists with closed-door access won major windfalls for wealthy clients.  It is a scandal that this bill was forced through by procedures so partisan and abusive that the media, voters and even members of Congress were deliberately prevented from knowing what was passed until after the vote.

It is scandalous that this bill can fairly be called a tax cut for the rich that did precious little, by comparison, for everyone else. It is scandalous that it creates massive deficits that poor and middle-class Americans will ultimately be forced to pay for.

Democrats should offer a plan to repeal portions of the Trump Republican tax scandal that offer the greatest windfalls to the most wealthy, and use half of the revenue gained to enact a new payroll tax cut for workers and the other half to lower the deficit.

Democrats can win big in 2018 and 2020 by speaking truths that are confirmed by history and experience, which majorities of voters will agree with: that Trump Republicans should not be permitted to attack Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and ObamaCare, harming the poor and middle class to pay for deficits they created with their scandalous tax cuts for the rich.

Democrats can win big by campaigning against the Trump tax scandal as the party that fights for right against wrong, and the party that fights for the many and not merely the few.

Budowsky was an aide to former Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Texas) and former Rep. Bill Alexander (D-Ark.), who was chief deputy majority whip of the U.S. House of Representatives. He holds an LLM in international financial law from the London School of Economics.